EDITOR’S NOTE: The Knox County Sports Hall of Fame inducted its inaugural class on Nov. 2, 2019 at the Knox County Historical Society. Seven local athletic legends made up the first class of inductees. Knox Pages reporter Grant Pepper helped research each inductee in preparation for the ceremony. This week, we will run stories based on that research. Pepper used resources like Newspapers.com, the world’s largest online newspaper archive, to collect statistics, quotes and anecdotes pertaining to each athlete.
The Ohio State University basketball program has won only one national championship in its 121-year history. A boy from Mount Vernon helped the Buckeyes win it.
Richie Hoyt, a 6-foot-4, 190-pound forward, served as a key backup on the Buckeyes’ 1959-60 championship team. Hoyt started and scored 7 points per game his sophomore year, but sacrificed for the good of the team his junior season, when a class of sensational sophomores – including Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek – came aboard.
Hoyt scored 58 points during his junior season, but it was his rebounding and defense that helped Ohio State claim its first national title. The Buckeyes beat California 75-55 in the 1960 championship game. They finished the season with a record of 25-3.
Hoyt’s first season at Ohio State was also the first season for legendary head coach Fred Taylor, a Zanesville native who would eventually lead the Buckeyes to five straight Big Ten titles, four Final Fours, three straight national title appearances, and nearly 300 wins in his 18-year tenure. Taylor has since been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Following Ohio State’s championship run in 1959-60, Hoyt played a bigger role in his senior season. He and a gritty junior named Bob Knight duked it out for the final starting spot alongside Lucas, Havlicek, Melvyn Nowell, and Larry Siegfried.
Hoyt won the job, and he scored a career-high 153 points that year as Ohio State went 27-1 and made it back to the national championship game. The Buckeyes would lose the 1961 title game to Cincinnati, however, 70-65 in overtime. It was their only loss of the season.
But the legend of Richie Hoyt was born long before he shared the court with Havlicek and Lucas. It originated in Mount Vernon, where Hoyt set four different scoring records during his senior high school basketball season in 1957.
Hoyt is best known for his 50-point performance against Galion during his senior campaign. Hoyt set the school’s single-game scoring record that night, and 62 years later, that record still stands.
A Newark Advocate story on that game described Hoyt as utterly unstoppable. Hoyt was seen during his high school days as a premier outside shooter, and Dec. 29, 1956 was no exception. The Newark Advocate reported the following:
“Hoyt, always an accurate outside shooter, came up with an amazing array of outside set and jump shots, a wide pivot hook shot and an assortment of under-basket drives, lay-ups and tip-ins …
“The unique thing about the performance was that Galion was using two boys taller than Hoyt and that Hoyt wasn’t being ‘fed’ by his teammates. Rather, Hoyt himself made direct assists on seven baskets by his teammates.”
Hoyt scored 28.2 points per game his senior year, setting the school’s single-season scoring record that still stands today. He scored over 1,000 points in his three-year varsity career, and had 112 points in four games in the 1957 Central District tournament, which was also a record at the time.
Hoyt, described by one newspaper as a “free-shooting redhead,” was widely known as one of the best shooters and rebounders in Ohio. He was named first-team all-Ohio his senior year, alongside Middletown junior Jerry Lucas and Shelby senior Larry Siegfried, his future Buckeye teammates.
Hoyt went on to play for the Ohio All-Stars that summer, and he scored the game-winning layup against Kentucky with 8 seconds remaining.
While best known for his basketball skills, Hoyt was a three-sport athlete at Mount Vernon High School. He played quarterback for the undefeated Yellow Jacket football team in 1956, and also played baseball in the spring.
Hoyt was a straight-A student in the classroom, a trend he continued at Ohio State, where newspaper reports indicate he received high marks as an engineering major. Following graduation, Hoyt entered a successful professional career, where he worked as an executive in a workers’ compensation company.
Today, Richie Hoyt’s basketball legacy lives on in the halls of Mount Vernon High School, where his name still stands on the school’s basketball records plaque. He will be forever known as a national champion Buckeye, and one of the finest athletes ever to emerge from Knox County.
